


So Innocent

by oncethrown



Series: Spaces Between [5]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e12 You Are Not Your Own, M/M, POV Magnus Bane, reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 06:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11202135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncethrown/pseuds/oncethrown
Summary: "You're so...innocent""In some ways"Back in his own body, Magnus knows that Alec loves him. That Alec is inexperienced in relationships.and that Alec is a Shadowhunter. Through and through.2x12 Reaction Fic, Magnus POV





	So Innocent

 

A knock at the door makes Magnus jump. He knows Alec sees him jump and he still throws a magical barrier up against the door before opening it. 

 

Inquisitor Herondale is standing in the hallway. With a subtle twist of his wrist Magnus makes the barrier crackle menacingly. 

 

“Mr. Bane. I’m only here for what’s mine.”

 

Magnus doesn’t move or say anything. The inquisitor purses her lips in that Shadowhunter way. The way that means they think you’re being ridiculous. 

 

“The Herondale Ring.”

 

Magnus isn’t a thief. He’s already given the ring to Alec. He can hear Alec moving to stand up behind him, but with a snap of Magnus’s fingers, the ring flies out of Alec’s pocket and into his hand. He lobs it at the Inquisitor and slams the door with another snap of his fingers. If she wants something else she can call. 

 

Alec looks at Magnus for a moment before crouching back down to return to his work on the pile of demon dust. Magnus walks past him silently. 

 

He needs a shower. 

 

* * *

 

Magnus’s hands feel raw from all of Valentine’s fumbling magic. Like they might blister. 

 

He washes his hands, then his hair, then just stands under the hot spray for a while, wondering if Alec is still out in the living room. He’d locked the bathroom door behind him. Alec had already followed him home. Magnus didn’t want to be followed in here. 

 

_“You’re so…innocent.”_

_“In some ways.”_

 

Magnus leans his head back under the water and magics up different soap. Mint scented, instead of the usual sandalwood. He washes his hands again, then starts soaping up the rest of himself. 

 

When he gets out of the shower, he carefully removes the last traces of his make up, washes his face and pats a towel over his body before wrapping the towel around his waist.  He looks at himself in the mirror, and drops the glamour over his eyes. After a few moments, he creates a one way window in the mirror. 

 

Through it, he can see Alec in the living room, kneading his hands. He looks deeply uncomfortable. Completely out of place. His runes so black against his pale skin. 

 

Alec is a shadowhunter. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Magnus has known decent Shadowhunters before. Will Herondale. Jem Carstairs. 

 

The arrogance. The willful blindness. The maddening privilege. Those things aren’t inherent. They are learned. 

 

They can be unlearned. 

 

With time. And effort. 

 

Alec is so young. Magnus can remember so few things about himself at that age. But there are still a few things. Things he had done that he would be ashamed to admit to Alec. Things that made him wonder if his mother had been right about him after all—

 

— No. He’s not going down that rabbit hole again. Not tonight. Not because of Shadowhunters. 

 

He doesn’t want to remember anymore. He doesn’t want to think.

 

In the kitchen, Alec starts to poke through drawers. He opens a bottom drawer, and bends over to look through it. 

 

Magnus watches, and sets his hand to the twist in the towel that is keeping it secured around his hips. 

 

There are some very effective ways not to think. Sex has always been his favorite, with booze a far second. 

 

Alec’s hands in his hair. Alec’s close clipped nails running down his back.

 

Alec’s hands rough around his arms, dragging him into a chair and tying him up to be tortured. Alec’s hands slapping him away, shoving him back against the wall of his prison cell. Gagging him before leaving to let an Inquisitor do whatever she wanted with him. 

 

_“You’re so… innocent.”_

_“In some ways.”_

 

How much blame could fairly be placed on Alec? Magnus asks himself. There hadn’t been a greater demon on Earth in decades. Alec had seen so little of magic in his short life. 

 

And all the years of that short life had been saturated in stories about the evils of Valentine. The wiles of the great beast of the Shadowhunters. Stories that were probably all the more graphic and dramatic for someone who had grown up with both Maryse Lightwood and Jace whatever his name was now.

 

But the look on Alec’s face when he’d walked in behind the Inquisitor. After everything Magnus had told him earlier. All the proof he’d offered. The way he’d begged to be believed. 

 

Magnus thumbs at the towel. He’s forgiven worse for people he’s cared about less… but Alec had said he loved him. That makes forgiveness for this harder, not easier. 

 

Magnus shakes his head, grabs his pot of moisturizer from the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and starts to slowly rub  dot after dot of the vanilla scented cream into his cheeks. 

 

No. Magnus doesn’t trust himself with Alec right now. Magnus isn’t himself, and Alec is— well—  Alec isn’t Camille. He won’t understand the urge to take the anger and the desire to punish someone you can’t lay on a hand on and twist it up into an unstoppable need to madly throwing someone face down over the couch and pound the indignation and frustration into them because it’s the only outlet for an ignored and ever-simmering outrage. Alec would think it was a punishment, or that Magnus hated him.

 

And maybe part of Magnus and Camille’s standing unspoken appointment for rough, angry sex after any dealing with the Clave had partially been the way Magnus’s initial love had curdled over the decades.  That sort of thing developed with a woman like Camille. 

 

But his relationship with Alec is too new. And Alec is so… innocent. 

 

Through the mirror, Magnus sees Alec pull a rag out of the drawer, wet it under the sink and bring it back to the pile of dust.

 

What could he really have expected a twenty-three year old Shadowhunter raised from birth to hate Valentine to have believed?

 

How much can he love someone who would draw an agony rune on another person?

 

What would Magus have done to Valentine himself, if he had the bastard locked up alone in the basement of the institute where so many downworlders had died?

 

What would his mother say about the images running through his head as he answers that question?

 

— No. 

 

Magnus closes the magic window. He just wants to slip into pajamas, make himself a cup of tea, and fall asleep asleep on the couch listening to music. 

 

But after tonight he’ll be damned if _anyone_ sees him dressed as anything other than the High Warlock of Brooklyn. 

 

He dashes his makeup back on, uses magic to put his hair back into place, and then uses a little more magic to freshen up the clothes he was just in before pulling them all back on. 

 

As he pulls on the pants, he feels the knot at the top of the omamori charm between his leg and the pocket fabric. He takes it out, runs his thumb over it, and tucks it back into the pocket. 

 

His eyes. For a moment, he considers leaving them. He’s just spend a day helpless and vulnerable without magic. This is his Mark. This is a declaration that he is a warlock. He’s not some Shadowhunter’s boyfriend. He’s not a fucking errand boy for the New York Institute. He’s the most powerful warlock in what they used to call the New World. He’s the most powerful warlock on the Continent, possibly the hemisphere. 

 

But he doesn’t want to see Alec seeing them. He doesn’t want to talk about them. Not tonight. 

 

He puts the glamor up, and goes back out to his living room, his moment of straight-backed defiance already leaving him. He’s exhausted. 

 

When Alec apologizes, Magnus wants to be able to explain everything he’s really feeling, but the words won’t come together. His longstanding hatred of the Clave. His anger with Alec over what he did. His hurt that Alec didn’t believe him. The way he wants Alec to comfort him, but doesn’t know what to ask for, or what he even wants. 

 

Alec is trying to skip to the part where everything is better. As if it could be easy. 

 

_“You’re so… innocent.”_

_“In some ways.”_

 

“That agony rune,” Magnus starts. It’s the smallest piece of the worst part, because the truth is that Magnus wants everything to be better too. He just knows that it can’t be easy. 

 

“Just tell me what to do,” Alec begs. “Please.”

 

Magnus opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. Alec’s face goes rigid, and Magnus just does not have it in him to comfort Alec tonight. He just can’t. 

 

He stands up and goes into the kitchen. 

 

“Tea?” he asks. 

 

Alec is staring down at his hands. “Do you want me to leave?”

 

There’s no good way of saying _Not as much as I don’t want to hurt you by asking you to go,_ but Magnus knows he can’t spend the night watching Alec sleep and wondering who his Shadowhunter boyfriend really is. 

 

“Not quite yet,” Magnus replies. “Is chamomile okay?”

 

“Sure.”

 

When it’s ready, they sit on opposite sides of the couch, drinking tea while the victrola plays in the background. A song Magnus can’t remember the name of. A recording he bought just after he moved to New York for the first time, back in the twenties. 

 

Alec finishes drinking his tea before Magnus’s has really even started to cool. Magnus sets his mug down and walks Alec to the door, where he lets Alec kiss him on the cheek. 

 

When Alec opens the door, the barrier Magnus had put up before is still there. Magnus dissolves it  without apology and Alec walks out with a promise to call the next day. 

 

Magnus counts to twenty, puts the barrier back up, magics himself into his pajamas, and collapses back onto the couch. 

 


End file.
